By the late 19th century, many in Queensland believed that the Aboriginal peoples, greatly reduced in number because of dispersal, malnutrition, opium use, and infectious diseases, were a "dying race".
Meston made a number of recommendations, some of which were the basis for the Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897.
[1] Though the Act's creators considered it a solution to a short-term problem, its administrators used it as a device for social engineering and control.
According to historian Henry Reynolds, it "was far more restrictive than any [contemporary] legislation operating in New South Wales or Victoria and implemented a system of tight controls and closed reserves".
At least in Queensland, once it had bestowed a racial category upon its charges, the Aboriginals Department treated its subjects according to their variations in skin colour.
[7] Those land rights were recognised by the High Court in the case of Mabo v Queensland [No 2] (1992) and by Parliament with the Native Title Act 1993.